Movie Reviews and Previews Articles

The downside of Johnny Depp always doing weird voices and wearing elaborate makeup for his film roles is that it has killed the magic of his performances. I LOVED Johnny Depp for years and years—he was one of my favorites when I started writing for this site—but he has killed my appreciation for his art with his constant stream of weirdo performances and his scarfy evolution (scarfolution) into a parody of himself. Full Story

Kristen Stewart’s new movie, American Ultra, opens in a few weeks, which means she will shortly be hitting the road to promote it—with Jesse Eisenberg. If ever there was a press tour with a high probability of going off the rails, it’s this one. Full Story

Have you read Emma Donoghue’s Room? I reviewed the book a few years ago – click here to read that post. I met Emma Donoghue. Heard her speak at an event at my alma mater, Western University. She was asked to talk for 7 minutes about creativity. Full Story

We must be approaching award season because the fall festivals have announced their lineups, led by TIFF, and now we’re starting to get trailers for the Oscar baity movies we’ll be watching in the fall. There’s a lot of good-looking stuff coming up, but the one film I’m most looking forward to—and have been since it was first announced—is Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, about the Boston Globe breaking the story of the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal. Full Story

Woody Allen makes basically two movies: Annie Hall, and Crimes and Misdemeanors. When he’s on his game, you get, well, Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors. When he’s not, you get Magic in the Moonlight and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. His latest movie—his forty-fifth, which means we should get sentimental about a milestone but ugh, this f*cking guy—is Irrational Man, and it’s a watered down, sh*tty version of Crimes and Misdemeanors. Full Story

As mentioned the other day, I interviewed Tom Cruise at the Toronto premiere of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation on Monday night for etalk. Am breaking up the analysis of the interview into different parts because there’s so much to say. Full Story

Cara Delevingne was interviewed by Good Morning Sacramento recently to promote Paper Towns. I interviewed Cara last year at TIFF. I found her beguiling and sweet and real. None of that showed up this time though, with this particular outlet. But there were problems on both sides.
First of all, they called her Carla. Full Story

Last holiday season’s movie talk was dominated by The Interview, the Seth Rogen movie that may or may not have prompted the Sony Hack. Sony famously dumped The Interview’s release, fearing further action from the hackers—they were already on their knees, it wasn’t an unreasonable thought—and ultimately it landed online, available through Google and Sony platforms. Full Story

Chris Hemsworth is in Vacation. The Hollywood premiere happened Monday night. His two actor brothers, Liam and Luke, showed up to support. The last time I wrote about the Hemsworths was the first time Duana’s ever been interested in them. It’s the sibling thing.
Liam was at Comic-Con. Full Story

With the Fantastic Four reboot just over a week away, Michael B. Jordan’s casting as Johnny Storm, traditionally white in the comic books and originally played in movies by Chris Evans, remains controversial. I can’t believe the number of people who have expressed some version of “but how can Michael B. Full Story

TIFF just made its first lineup for this year’s festival. Jean-Marc Vallee’s Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts, is the opening night gala. Jake, as you know, could be a contender for his performance in Southpaw. His Southpaw co-star, Rachel McAdams, will be at TIFF too. Full Story

Tom Cruise is currently promoting Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. The reviews so far are good, really good – 94% at post time on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw it on Saturday. And, yeah, I agree. First of all, you don’t go into Mission Impossible expecting Birdman. Full Story

Based on the notorious 1971 study in which a group of Stanford students pretending to be prisoners and prison guards descended into psychological abuse and brutality after barely a day, The Stanford Prison Experiment is an impressive but maybe too literal reconstruction of those events. Dr. Philip Zimbardo randomly divided twenty-four students into prisoners and guards, then left the guards in charge, with the guards, working in shifts of three, running herd on nine prisoners. Full Story

It would be so easy to lambast Pixels as a cravenly lazy, creatively defunct, possible Ponzi scheme in which audience dollars are siphoned into Adam Sandler’s private jet fund. I would remind you that working on Sandler movies is a soul-destroying experienceFull Story